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OTTAWA — New Democratic Party MP Don Davies says it never occurred to him when he innocuously snapped a photo at an anti-racism march in Vancouver last month that he would suddenly become the latest target in an increasingly vicious Canadian political culture.

That single act would result in the Vancouver MP being described in the House of Commons, and in a news release from Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, as a cheerleader for "anarchists and anti-capitalist mobs" and a defender of the rights of "violent foreign criminals, war criminals and bogus asylum claimants."

It was even argued by one of Kenney's colleagues that the photo shows that Davies and the NDP may be sympathetic to anti-Israel terrorists, human smugglers, violent anti-capitalism protesters, and anarchists who believe the Canadian state is an "illegitimate occupying power" on aboriginal territory that should be known as Turtle Island, not Canada.

This isn't the first time government critics have found themselves under the political equivalent of a truckload of bricks.

Environmental groups are portrayed as foreign-backed, anti-Canadian radicals. And MPs who dared to oppose the government's Internet surveillance legislation were told in February they're siding with child pornographers.

Opposition parties have hardly been wallflowers at this ugly dance. Liberal interim leader Bob Rae, while in the same breath accusing Harper of trying to "decapitate" opponents, said this week that both the prime minister and NDP leader Thomas Mulcair this week are being dishonest.

And Kenney's office provided quotes from Liberal, NDP and Bloc MPs accusing the Conservatives in recent years of being racist against aboriginals, anti-immigrant and homophobic.

While some say little has changed in the often-brutal history of Canadian politics, others suggest a new level of U.S.-style wedge politics is having a major impact on political discourse involving both MPs and "civil society" groups.

"It sounds like some of our toxic political strategies have moved north of the border," said David Mark, a Washington-based senior editor with Politico.com and author of Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning.

The Vancouver march, involving several hundred people on a Sunday afternoon, was to mark the United Nations-sanctioned International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

It was promoted on the websites of a number of mainstream organizations that included the NDP, several public sector unions and a Vancouver students' association.

But Davies, who represents the riding of Vancouver Kingsway — arguably the most left-wing in the country — committed an unpardonable sin, according to Kenney, who represents the very conservative riding of Calgary Southeast.

The march was organized by the anarchist organization No One Is Illegal. The group's supporters carried signs and banners, including one amateurish sign that declared: "People's March Against Jason Kenney!"

Davies, who is Kenney's official critic in Parliament, tweeted the photo along with the comment that this was his "favourite" sign at the march.

"You're at a No One is Illegal event, Don?" Kenney replied on Twitter several minutes later. "That's pretty extreme. They're anarchists who oppose any limits on immigration & . . ."

The House of Commons wasn't sitting that week but a week later, when MPs returned to Ottawa, Davies was accused of being sympathetic to NOII's positions.

When Davies, a 49-year-old Edmonton-born lawyer, rose to protest the characterization, made in the House of Commons by Calgary Tory backbencher Devinder Shory, Kenney said the comparisons were totally justified — a position he re-stated this week.

Davies remains livid. He compares Kenney's assault to the 1950s anti-Communist campaign by U.S. senator Joe McCarthy, which relied on guilt-by-association and demanded that accused Communist sympathizers publicly declare their patriotism and expose and denounce other presumed Communists.

"My motivation was to march for tolerance and against racism. This is a McCarthyite smear. The suggestion that I know about (No One Is Illegal's) policies, and that I adhere to them, is absurd," he said.

"It's guilt by association. This is intimidation and is meant to stifle free expression and ideas. It was wrong in the 1950s and it is wrong today."

He said the government is going too far on several fronts.

"People that oppose pipelines are foreign radicals, people who oppose Internet surveillance laws are on the side of child pornographers, and people who march against racism support war criminals," he said.

Kenney defends his criticism of the NDP's immigration critic, and said this week that he still expects Davies to distance himself from the group.

Kenney also rejected any suggestion that Canadian political behaviour has turned decidedly negative under Tory rule.

He cites past examples of Liberal charges of racism against small-c conservatives, including Sheila Copps' 1991 comparison of Reform party founder Preston Manning to U.S. Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Going Dirty author David Mark said political parties all over the Western world are increasingly following the U.S. lead in using nasty "wedge" politics.

"It's usually a divide-and-conquer strategy. It's often done when you realize your own positive ratings aren't that high or are not likely to rise, so all you can do is bring down the other guy and get their voters to stay home on election day."

Brutalizing opponents is nothing new, according to professor emeritus Ned Franks of Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

"Politicians have been demonizing opponents since time immemorial."

But the Tories crossed a line when Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, after introducing Internet surveillance legislation in February, told MPs that they could either side with the government or with child pornographers, Franks said.

Toews eventually retracted that remark after a flood of criticism from Canadians. Rightly so, according to Franks.

"When they start this name-calling denigration of the opposition, you're denying them their legitimate role in the system. You are putting the whole parliamentary system into question."

University of Ottawa political scientist Michael Orsini, who specializes in the role of interest groups and social movements in politics, says there has been a shift.

"It's tempting to say that we have seen all of this before, and we should be careful not to let off the Liberals or NDP Scot-free here," Orsini said Thursday.

"But I think it's fair to say that we are sinking deeper into a moral swamp. The mudslinging has, no doubt, been around for a long time, but there's a new ugliness here."

Green party leader Elizabeth May said even before last week's budget — which included $8 million to help the Canada Revenue Agency crack down on the alleged foreign influence of Canadian environmental charities — the Tory government has successfully intimidated the environmental movement.

May noted that the Conservatives, after their 2006 election breakthrough, became the first party in Canadian history to broadcast attack ads against their opponents.

"The volume and viciousness is off the charts," she said.

"And I would make a distinction because they're going after civil society. They're not just restricting the attack to other political parties, which is bad enough, but they are demonizing any Canadian group that opposes them."

But University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan, Harper's 2004 campaign director, wrote in 2009 that little has changed other than that the Liberals are acting like "whiny schoolgirls" now that they're on the receiving end of negative attack ads.

He cited Copps' Ku Klux Klan allegation against Manning and the 2006 Liberal campaign ads that tried to portray Harper as a sinister figure who would eliminate abortion rights and put armed troops in Canadian streets.

Warren Kinsella, the former Liberal war room campaign strategist and author of Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics, is no shrinking violent when it comes to campaign politics. He wrote this week that he teaches young campaign workers to "loathe" Conservatives.

"I tell them, '"Step on their necks, and don't lift your foot until the day after the election. Hurt them.'"

But Kinsella said the Tories take political brawling too far.

"Going after unelected people in a vicious, personal way isn't just undemocratic — it's a sign of mental illness," said Kinsella, who described the government's use of the Canada Revenue Agency to target environmentalists as "Nixonian."

But Bernie Morton, Canadian editor of the U.S. political magazine Campaigns & Elections, said politicians of all stripes hire consultants who specialize in denigrating and discrediting their opponents.

And he said environmental groups are legitimate targets.

Morton, a veteran campaign organizer for small-c conservative candidates, said veteran political operatives recently attended a seminar run by his magazine in Washington featuring a Greenpeace campaign organizer as a guest speaker providing expert advise.

Environmental groups sometimes have more funds than political parties and don't face the same regulatory scrutiny, and therefore need to be challenged by governments, according to Morton.

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